


Shattering

by Brighid



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Episode Related: Cypher, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-10
Updated: 2013-05-10
Packaged: 2017-12-11 01:00:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/792204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brighid/pseuds/Brighid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Who do you see in the Mirror?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shattering

**Author's Note:**

> This story is not a strict retelling, but it borrows themes and images from Snow White. = ) 
> 
> Beth offered invaluable insights on many points -- they improved the story vastly, I think. Anything I didn't change is my own stubborn fault. Including the licking. I have a _thing_ about licking. = ) The R-rating is because of some language, and the blood imagery -- it squicks some people immensely.

## Shattering

by Brighid

Author's webpage: <http://internettrash.com/users/livia/brighid/brighid.htm>

Author's disclaimer: Not mine, in any universe. No profit, don't sue, or I'll fix my magick mirror on _you_. = )

* * *

Shattering 

By Brighid 

He was born into darkness, a void; created of nothing, filled with nothing, he was endlessly hungry: for experience, for identity, for self. He was the sum total of all wanting, the Alpha and Omega of all appetites. He wanted more dearly, more deeply, more demandingly than any parent, than any lover, than death itself. 

Such ones are filled with the magick of nothing. The Darkness weaves itself, its power, deep into Its minions, so that they might move through the day, so that they might reach out and pull the light into shadow and transform everything, utterly. 

He was gifted with a chameleon's way, and a mirror that reflected his darkness and swallowed the light of those he was to consume, those with whom he might fill the void of his creation, his chaos. He took these things, and several smaller, simpler magicks, and went out into the Light, to do the bidding of the Darkness. 

The Dark One went forth, and _wanted_. 

)0( 

Blair sat sprawled on the couch, still in his boxers, shirt still open. He heard Jim settling in overhead, but made no move towards bed himself. A part of him was still a little pissed: at Christine, for thinking badly of him so damned quickly; at Jim for having all the finesse and tact of a bull moose; at himself for losing it like puling three year old. Good word, puling. 

He rolled it around in his mouth, savoured it like dark beer, like single-malt whiskey. He didn't just save the big words for the boys down at the station house, oh no. He could use them against himself with equal effectiveness, and significantly more malice. Puling: weak, infantile wailing. 

Segued nicely into puking, which he'd damn near done after seeing Susan Frazer's body. Not that she'd been all that badly messed up. Not that he hadn't seen a dead body before. But they'd always been calm, and peaceful, and surrounded by people who loved them. He'd never seen someone alone, stripped of everything, _everyone_ who made her real. Her remembered her face, frozen in shock, horror, her body splayed out in a twisted parody of an artful nude, yet all the more obscenely naked for the yellow scarf wound about her bloodless throat. 

How the hell did you detach from that? How did you let that go and eat your meals and fuck your girlfriend and goddamned _sleep_ at night when things like that existed? 

And yet, if he was going to see this thing through, if he was going to be a _partner_ to Jim and not some half-baked tag-along, then he needed to do just that. He had to pack away his horror and his grief and let it go. He had to find a way to make this work. He had to do the "right thing". 

His hands fisted restlessly in the afghan as he struggled through this, all the while listening to the steady, almost soothing sounds of Jim Ellison settling into sleep. Somewhere, in the middle of it all, he fell asleep. 

He awoke to Jim gently pulling him up, walking him to his own bed, manhandling him under the covers. 

"How do you do it?" he asked, his voice indistinct with sleep, a little ragged with grief and fear and something very like longing. 

Jim just rested a hand briefly against his shoulder, warm and solid and comforting. "Go to sleep, Sandburg," he said at last, an odd mixture of annoyance and affection. "Just go to sleep." 

)0( 

The Dark One came to a kingdom in the mountains, a heavily fortified place, and the dark nothing inside him rippled, pulsed, trembled: here then, here. 

But the walls were built to keep such a one as him out, and the guards who walked the perimeter were keen-eyed and hard-limbed. It would take great cunning, great subtlety to find his way into the walled city, into the fortress at its heart. 

He set down his traveller's pack, pulled out a thickly swaddled bundle. Quickly, pale fingers dartingly, damningly swift, he stripped it down to a smooth, silvered oval of glass. It lay upon the grass before him like a reflecting pool, and he peered into it, but everything was nothing: only darkness, deep and drowning. With one, sharp nail he slashed open his left ring finger and squeezed out three fat, wet drops of blood so red they gleamed black on the polished surface of the mirror. It sizzled and hissed and then flared brightly. The darkness parted, and a face stared back at him, lean and bearded and lined by adversity and suffering. An herbalist, with a farm outside the walls of the city, but a busy trade within them. A man who went about, saw much, knew many, but was perhaps not so well known in turn. This then, was his way in, his beginning. 

He repacked the mirror, and turned his path to the herbalist's cottage. It was an isolated place, far from any others, which was well, for the cries of the herbalist's dying were enough to wither all his gardens, and blight the very soil. 

)0( 

Aw, fuck. 

Blair kicked the curb in frustration, wanting to mar the concrete, maybe mar himself a little in the process. 

So _not_ cool. Hell, all he needed was an air horn and the big foamie finger, and he'd have fucked the thing up but _good_. He was _so_ dead, it wasn't even funny. No way in hell he'd be doing any more ride-alongs with Ellison, not after that debacle. If Jim himself didn't pull the plug, then Simon sure as hell would. And if that happened, he could just about kiss his dissertation good-bye. Adios higher education, hell-o student loan repayment. 

And no more Jim, either, a small voice whispered, darkly, insidiously. Sentinels needed someone to watch their backs, not paint 'kick me here' signs on their asses. Whatever help he was with figuring out Jim's senses, it would mean fuck-all in the face of this screw-up. Jim was a man who respected competence, who expected people to do their job _right_. This was not something that he could overlook. Shit, shit, shit. Good-bye roommate, hello world! He kicked the curb again, but it stubbornly refused to crack, and it only made his toes ache enough to piss him off even more. 

And which part, that small, traitorous voice demanded, are you more worried about? Losing your subject, or losing Jim's respect? 

Aw, fuck. 

"Excuse me, sir? Channel 10 news." A woman's voice pulled him out of his self-absorbed musing, turned him around, and he suddenly found himself with a face full of reporter, camera and bright light. Obviously someone was just remembering seeing him arrive with Jim. He squinted a bit, frowned as forbiddingly as he knew how, hoping to at least get a 7 on the Jim-scale. 

"What?" 

"We saw you arriving with Detective Ellison, and we'd like to know what you expected to uncover at the funeral. Would your presence mean that you are close to capturing the serial killer?" the woman asked, rushing to get her questions in before the rest of the crews circling the scene caught on. 

Blair glowered even harder. "Do I _look_ like a goddamned cop?" he said, gesturing at his hair and earrings. 

The reporter sighed, motioned for the camera to shut down. "Not really, no," she said, and there was something condescending, perhaps even a little vicious in the way she said it, the way her eyes assessed and dismissed Blair. "But you have to play every angle, just in case." She jerked her head, moved back to the milling crowd, and Blair kicked the curb again, both pleased and dismayed at how easily she had moved on. 

)0( 

The herbalist's skin fit him strangely: tight in some places, loose in others. It was not a shape he'd wear long, only long enough to suit his purposes and be discarded. He found the market stall the herbalist owned and began unloading the day's goods: fresh herbs, powdered roots, concoctions, decoctions, tonics, pastes, powders, unguents, oils and scents. Love philtres and luck charms as well. Small, trifling magicks, more trickery than art, but still, much sought after. He limped his way through the pre-dawn market set-up. By the time the morning sky was full bright, he was behind the stall's curtain, unwrapping the glass again, feeding it blood, seeing a face form in its murky depths. The herbalist's shape had gotten him into the city; the mirror showed him the way into its heart, where the darkness inside him yearned to be. 

When the jongleur came an hour before midday, demanding a fresh supply of "Pretty Lady" for his fine, dark eyes, the Dark One smiled the herbalist's twisted smile at him and told the handsome, long-haired boy that he had just the thing for him, in the back of his stall, behind the curtain. This time, his magick was more practiced, his appetite less unruly; he drugged the jongleur with spiced wine and bitter herbs and stole his face and voice and gifts, then slipped out into the afternoon with his mirror in its pack over one shoulder, a skin of drugged wine over the other, and the jongleur's harp safe against his belly. He walked deeper into the city's heart, and the darkness inside him trembled in anticipation. 

)0( 

The air was thick with smoke, but the underlying scents of pot and booze and good, old-fashioned rut were what really got to Blair, made him twitch. He snorted into his beer, trying to picture Jim staking out the joint. Not that there weren't some older guys here, but Jim -- man. It'd be like a lion hanging out with the housecats. He could just _see_ the big mook leaning against the bar, scanning the crowd like he was Ahab looking for the goddamned white whale. 

He slipped his arm out, wrapped it around Christine's slender waist, grooved a bit to the beat of the house band. Then again, there were those leather pants he'd found in the bottom of Jim's dresser when he'd done a sock raid last month. A man had some sort of history if he had leather pants tucked away in his bureau, hidden under flannel shirts and wool sweaters. 

He found himself picturing Jim in the crowd, in leather pants, moving through it, and Jim was still a lion, but suddenly he was the king of all cats, sleek and dark and dread in the midst of all the domesticated felines; something inside Blair clicked and caught and made him choke, softly; ache, less softly. Christine seemed suddenly too small, too delicate in his arms. 

She seemed to sense his unease, and turned dark, discerning eyes upon him. "What's the matter?" she asked. 

He shook it off, pushed it away. He was here now, he had a job he could do, had to do. "About time we started schmoozing, asking some questions," Blair answered, pressing his mouth against her ear, and that, too was wrong; too sweet, too floral in the heat and the musk of the place. 

He found himself wondering, abruptly, what Jim would smell like, before he could stop himself, and somehow it just made it all the more important that he do this, and do it right. This was where he could make a difference, if he stayed focused, did what he was good at. He took a deep draught of his beer, pasted on a big, bright smile, and moved through the crowd towards the band stage, knowing they'd be breaking in a few. 

He bought them a few beers, chatted about the music scene, did his best 'anthropologist blending' routine, and goddamn if the connections didn't start spilling. He'd read all the files Jim had brought home, knew the dates and the timelines, and hot damn if he wasn't, finally, getting it right. 

)0( 

The jongleur's memory led him to a middling level courtesan with the couture of a street-whore, but her bed was warm and sweet and her bath deep and fragrant and she drank the wine down willingly; she was not a woman to turn down a free glass. 

When he was done, her breasts bobbed prettily in the water, and her ribboned hair floated out around her like sea grass; he wiped his mouth with a few drops of her blood, and suddenly it was her smile, all blood red and snow white, staring out at him from his glass. The Dark One touched the soft, full moon breasts and their crinkling brown nipples, stroked down the curve of his smooth, new belly. She was pretty, but still not what the wanting cried for, what it needed. There was another, there had to be another. 

He fumbled through her paint pots and perfumes and gauds, until he found a long, gleaming pin, and pricked himself though the tender pink of her skin. Three drops of blood on the mirror and the face shifted, changed, became that of an ascetic man with watchful eyes and a careful, quiet visage. The image cleared again, became the courtesan's. He reached once more into her pots and pretties, and painted himself up to go out hunting. 

He took with him the skin of wine, and left behind the harp, every last string cut. 

)0( 

Blair noted the look on Jim's face when he came in to the conference room, saw the faint wrinkling of the nose, the glare when he told them just where he'd been, but he didn't care, just didn't care, because he'd finally done something right here, finally made it. This proved that he belonged at the Sentinel's back, at Jim's side. 

And it was such a freaking buzz, up half the night, a couple of beers and a lot of coffee, and the knowledge that he had figured this fucker _out_ , that he knew the score when Jim and Simon and the rest of the Cascade PD were still scratching their asses. It felt ... 

... good. 

Damned good. 

And Doctor Bates' quiet approval, his warm support just added to the whole thing. It was like, _hello_ , the icing on the cake. He was no longer Blair Sandburg, puling puke, or neon-sign boy, or little hanger-on. 

He was the _man_. He'd helped piece together the case, maybe even helped make the case, and goddamn it, Jim would be looking at him, proud if still a little pissed, and patting him on the shoulder, anytime now. Anytime, now. 

Anytime. 

)0( 

The courtesan found her way into a Royal Advisor's bed that night, and when she set up her mirror so that he might watch their coupling, he asked no questions, and when she bit his fingers until they bled, he was too far lost in passion to complain, and when the sun rose up in the morning, there was a lean blonde man lying naked and spent beyond renewal in the bed, even as the Dark One arose in the same, pale skin, like a ghost. And this was good, this was better, but it was still not what he needed, what he coveted. Again he pricked his finger, dropped blood onto his mirror. He watched the roiling darkness part, saw a dark-haired man with a gaze like the ocean, and the darkness, the emptiness hovering beneath his stolen visage trembled, shook, yearned: this then, this. 

He found his way into the guard tower, found the Captain of the Guard and his lieutenant mulling over the words of their scouts and oracles and entrails-throwers. There was a Shadow-Soul in the land, something walking amongst them, killing them without prejudice, without mercy. He found himself nodding to them, listening to their fears and fallacies. He pulled out some of his smaller magicks, consulted the cards and the bones and the stones as well. He told them small truths, in hopes that they would miss the larger lie, and waited. 

Eventually the one the mirror had promised came to them: neither priest nor guard, but somewhere in the middle, a no-where, a no-thing, almost like himself, yet not at all like him. This one had found a place, binding himself to the quiet lieutenant with the far-away gaze; he was fighting to learn his path and to keep to it, fighting to be the partner a far-seer might need. The young man's body held the emptiness of wide-flung bright, of burning stars and flaring candles. This one lit the room, the light within him shone so fiercely. The chasm inside the Dark One yearned, suddenly, terribly. This one, this one would fill the void. Wanting hollowed him, threatened to crack wide the fragile shell he wore. 

He found himself watching the Captain's lieutenant, how the man's eyes followed the younger man, how they darkened and lit in response to what the younger man said and did; he found an answering fire in the younger man's gaze, proving their bonding already halfway completed, even if they were not aware of it themselves. He found himself wanting that, as well: eyes that followed, eyes that knew him, eyes that could not look away. Belonging. A place. Love. The Dark One coveted it all. He made a small gesture, left his mark, faint and ghostly upon the No-where, the No-thing (Every-where, Every-thing) of the other, and then slipped away to bide his time. 

)0( 

It was as if the chill evening air had invaded his bones; he was unable to shake off the disquiet of that doppelganger moment. He moved restlessly through the loft, trying to let go of his regret over Christine, his irrational unease in the empty loft, his sudden, restless yearning for something he couldn't name, could only reach for blindly, futilely. 

And then came the skittering, like rats in the wainscoting, and he was at the phone, calling instinctively for Jim, dismayed when Jim wasn't there. How _fucking_ irrational could he be, hanging onto the big cop like a security blanket, but goddamnit, why didn't the phone _ring_ already, and he was thinking maybe he should call 911 for real, but it was already too late; the door frame splintered and the door came exploding inward, and everything was slow-motion and kaleidoscope: 

David Lash, but not, poised somewhere between the nonentity of his own identity and the borrowed plumage of Blair Sandburg. 

Quite suddenly, irrationally, he remembered that seeing one's own doppelganger was a harbinger of one's own death. Adrenaline surged through his body, and he fought like a wild thing against the intruder, but it was useless in the face of the unadulterated _want_ , the insatiable _hunger_ that was David Lash. The back of his head caught something blunt and hard, and he saw bright, then dark, then nothing at all. 

)0( 

He let the other wake slowly, let recognition dawn piece by painful piece. He knew that this was a skin he'd wear for a long time to come, and he wanted to savour the moment, he wanted this to be like the consummation of lovers. He wanted their emptinesses to merge and fill one another, until the darkness and the bright were irrevocably intertwined. This was what he was born to, this was what he had coveted from the moment the Darkness had woven him from the thin filaments of the void. 

The Dark One pulled the young man's left hand free from its bindings, pricked the ring finger, blotted out three red drops on a snowy white square of cloth. He repeated the gesture on his own hand, blotting on black silk, then wrapped the black silk around the white and shoved it into his captive's mouth, as if he could somehow push himself into the other. 

His captive howled and growled and spit out the binding charm. "You can't be me," he cried out, but the Dark One merely smiled, shook his head. 

"Blood magick is strong magick, boy. I'm already inside of you, a part of you ... can't you feel the shadow, can't you feel the darkness?" His hands were smooth, soft on the young man's face. 

The young man bit down on his tongue, hard enough to bleed, and spat viscous red into the face of the Dark One. "I deny you, I deny you, I deny you!" he cried, fumbling for the Rule of Three, reaching for a little blood magick of his own. It angered the Dark One; he lashed out, struck a stinging blow across the other's cheek, burned him where dark met bright. 

"Deny me all you want, boy," the Dark One snarled, "I'm already a part you, and soon I'll be all of you, and we'll never, ever be apart. We're the same, you and I, wanting what we aren't, wanting what we cannot have, but the difference is," he said, calmer, gentler, taunting with half-truths and half-lies; he began stroking the younger man's face, holding up his mirror so that his captive could see the merging, the transformation, "I will have you, and then I will have _him_." 

Something hard and blunt struck the mirror from his hand, shattered it, sending dark slivers of glass over them both. He turned, saw the lieutenant standing there, a second arrow nocked and ready to be loosed. "I will have you first," the lieutenant said, and his voice held the certainty of stone. A heartbeat later the arrow flew, piercing the shell the Dark One wore, setting all his shadows loose upon the room, a howling storm of frustrated want. The hunter paid no heed to it, only crossed over to the younger man to release him from his bindings and pull the mirror's shards from his skin. A few cut the lieutenant's fingers, but he was a man used to darkness, and so he barely even felt the sting. His own blood fell into the wounds of the younger man, mingled there and broke the binding of the Dark One, but it could not erase the taint the blood magick had begun. 

Nor could he pull all the slivers of glass free; some worked themselves deeply in, leaving behind a memory of _want_ so vast and terrible that at last the young man began to weep with the grievous weight of it all. 

The lieutenant merely lifted him up and carried him out the last, lingering shadows, into the light of a new day. 

)0( 

It took a few days, but eventually it all hit him; one night, as he was getting ready for bed, his reflection caught him by surprise, made him shudder. 

"Who am I now?" flashed across his memory. 

"Did you mean what you said?" echoed in his ears. 

He knew, deep down knew, that he and Lash were not so very different, not really. Both of them wanting something that wasn't theirs to have, trying to be what they were not, what they had no right to be. 

Quite suddenly he was angry, absolutely white with rage, and he found himself pounding the glass with his bare fists, hating his own reflection, seeing only the twisted image of Lash as he capered and danced and tried to be Blair Sandburg. 

Tried to be Blair Sandburg. 

Whoever the _fuck_ he was. 

He wasn't even aware that he was making any noise at all, let alone yelling, until two strong arms wrapped around him, two big hands grabbed his sore, bruising knuckles, forced them away from the still blessedly whole mirror. 

"Ease up, Chief," Jim's voice rumbled in his ear. "With the way your luck runs, I don't think you should be pissing off the pixies or whoever the hell is in charge of broken mirrors, huh?" 

Blair let himself go limp, fall back against Jim's broad chest. "Aw, fuck, I hate this, I freaking hate this," he gasped, his breath hitching and fast, his head spinning like it hadn't done in almost eight years. "I fucking _hate_ this," he sobbed. 

Jim's grip changed, shifted into a loose embrace even as he dropped them down so that they were both sitting on the floor. "I know, Chief, I know," he said softly. 

"No you don't know," Blair corrected him, a little wild, getting wilder. "You don't goddamned know, Jim." He struggled against Jim's deceptively gentle hold, wanting to get _away_ , wanting more than anything to avoid this final indignity, this final fragmentation. "You don't goddamned know _shit_ , Jim." 

He felt Jim's left hand press strong and solid on the centre of his chest, as though the older man were feeling his heartbeat and trying to will it to slow down by sheer force. "Okay, so I don't goddamned know _shit_ ," the big man agreed mildly. "So tell me," he said a moment later, his voice still soft, still gentle, managing to sound both a little disinterested and completely sincere at the same time. 

"He thought he could be me, and I kept telling him he couldn't, that he didn't know who I was, but goddamnit it, Jim," and he shuddered, feeling it inside like a sickness, only he was too damned full of empty to puke, no matter how the saliva swam and his gut churned. "Goddamnit, I don't even know who the fuck I am. I know who I _used_ to be, and I know, maybe, who I _wanna_ be, but who the _fuck_ am I now?" and it came out in dark, ragged gasps as he fought for breath against the rising tide of shadow in his own heart. 

"You're Blair Sandburg," Jim replied, with galling simplicity. 

Blair choked, tried to explain that a name meant exactly _shit_ , but Jim's other hand ghosted over his mouth, silencing him. "Just shut-up and listen, all right? I don't do this often, and if you bring it up later, I'll say you were buzzed on chamomile tea or something." He took a deep breath, and Blair could feel Jim's heartbeat pressed up against his back. "So you're Blair, no-middle-name-revealed, Sandburg. You're also Chief, and Darwin, and Shecky when you're a smart-ass and about a billion other things I hang on you without even thinking. And you're the kid around the station, and the jerk when you leave wet towels on the hardwood, and you're the guy who drinks crap that smells like shit I wouldn't scrape out of the drain, and who for some reason likes pineapple and insists on ruining perfectly good food with it. You're also the guy who makes me watch specials on the lost civilization of the Etruscans and then falls asleep in the middle because he's spent the last three nights marking until the crack of dawn. And you're the guy who watches my back even when I think I don't want it watched," and here, Blair felt a tension thrumming through Jim's body, a strange, fleeting strain as the older man breathed deeply, seemingly breathing _Blair_ in. 

"And you're the one who helps me when I'm a surly jackass, and you're the one who puts up with my tight-ass ways and still keeps coming back for more, and you're the first person in years to actually _listen_ to me and _look_ at me and see me, or as much of me as I let anyone see. Probably a hell of a lot more than I want you to see." Jim paused, took a deep, slightly shaky breath. Blair felt the tide of panic recede, felt the breath come again, the nausea pass. Something tight and dark began to unknot within him. 

"You're my friend. You're my partner. My partner who should do as he's told and not go into Club Doom and who should wait in the truck for back up but who usually doesn't, but that's not the point," Jim continued, and Blair felt the light press of the older man's fingers over his mouth when he started to retort to that. Instead, he just smiled a little, and the fingers moved away. "And you're the guy who's saved my life, just as surely as I've ever saved yours, 'cause I was heading for a mental institution, sure as shit, the way these senses of mine were going. And you're the guy who just freaking leapt out in front of a truck the day we met. The guy who's been leaping in front of things, ever since." He felt Jim's hands shift, tugging his shoulders gently, until he turned and they were face to face. "And you're about, hell, a billion other things that shift and change as the situation requires, but what never changes is that you're a _good_ person, okay? So enough with the shit on the mirror and no more wigging out behind locked doors, all right?" 

Blair looked around Jim's shoulders to see the slightly splintered area around the strike plate where Jim had forced his way through. "Shit," Blair breathed. 

"No kidding," Jim agreed, hauling himself to his feet and pulling Sandburg up along with him. "You're hell on the household, Sandburg. I knew I should've got a damage deposit up front, considering how your last place blew up." He stood there, smiling down at Blair, who was goose-pimpling slowly as the older man's long thumb stroked absent-mindedly over his bruised knuckles. 

"Ah, Jim?" he ventured at last as the moment stretched thin and fine and bright between them. 

"Yeah, Sandburg?" Jim replied mildly. 

"You're still holding my hand, man," Blair offered, a little floundered, but liking it, all the same. 

Jim glanced down at their joined hands, then back up to Blair's face. "Your point, Darwin?" and his voice was a low, gruff drawl, somehow both teasing and challenging. 

"Uh, no point," Blair stammered. "Just wondering if you knew, s'all." The slow, soft motion of Jim's caress was dizzying, drugging, going to his head like wine. 

"I know," Jim said. "I just realized something else you are, is all." 

Blair thought, briefly, about how he'd been in the can when Kincaid's men had taken the station, and how they'd found Susan Frazer in her bathtub, and wondered if all the totally weird shit in his life was now destined to take place in the john. "And that is?" 

"Beautiful," Jim said, leaning down, and in. "This is your chance to turn away, just so you know, Sandburg," he warned softly, but Blair knew with a sudden rush of clarity that this was who Blair Sandburg was, as much or more than anything else, and it was something David Lash could neither touch not blight. He strained up, caught Jim's kiss open-mouthed, and he felt all the shattered bits coming together again. It wouldn't be the same as before, it didn't work that way, but it was still good. 

"And loved?" Blair risked, a long while later, breathless and disheveled, his eyes meeting Jim's in the bathroom mirror. 

Jim leaned in, licked a slow trail up the side of his neck and over his ear. "And loved," he replied, his eyes not once leaving Blair's. 

It was very good, indeed. 

)0( 

An End 


End file.
